Cold Sheets
by AmyBot3000
Summary: One Shot. The sheets are cold without you there.


**A/N**: Happiness isn't what you'll find here.

Keaton Henson - You

* * *

"I love you." Gail smiles back at me, and to this day it's still the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.

It's a weekend, the sun is just peaking through the curtains and the light is spilling out across Gail's naked back. Everything feels warm, everything feels _right_.

"Well obviously, how could you not?" I reach out and start tracing the line of her back, smiling at the goose bumps my fingers leave in their wake.

"And?" She smiles at me coyly and rolls onto her side to face me her mouth opening to answer me.

"GAIL!"

My arm reaches out blindly and touches her side of the bed. The sheets are cold and Gail is still gone.

I try and remember everything about the dream, the way the sun looked across Gail's skin, the sound of her voice, the smell of her body, but it slowly ebbs away. It's morning in the waking world too and I can hear the rain outside.

I'm not sure what day it is, ever since Gail left they've been rolling into one. I was surprised when someone mentioned it had already been six months since she left me, when it still felt like just yesterday she was here in bed next to me.

I wasn't at work the day she left, we were both meant to have the day off, we had tickets for a movie and reservations for dinner. I still keep those movie tickets where she left them on the dresser, even months later I can't bear to move them. Gail was only called in because someone was sick, they never told me who and I don't ever want them to. I can't remember if I told her that I loved her that morning, but really a fool could have seen how in love I was, how in love I still am.

It's a fact that Gail Peck looks beautiful when she sleeps. It's also now a fact that Gail Peck looks beautiful when she's dead. You would never know she was, her lips were a little blue and there was a red circle on her forehead, but overall she looked peaceful, she looked beautiful. I didn't dare to move her head, I knew the red circle was just the small end of the cataclysm that was the missing part of her skull on the back of her head.

They still don't know I went to the morgue, but I had to see her, I had to see it was true.

The man who shot her hadn't planned on killing Gail, he just wanted to kill _a_ cop and Gail just happened to be the first to go through the door of his apartment. The scientist in me knows she didn't feel any pain, she probably didn't even have time to realise he had a gun. She was just there at one moment, then gone the next.

I kept the sheet pulled up to her chin, someone had already done the autopsy, not that there was any surprise about what killed her. I knew what was lurking beneath the sheet, the brutal Y shaped incision that would be across her chest and I didn't want to see it, I didn't want to ruin my memory of her. Instead I just held my hand against her cheek and stroked her skin with my thumb, she used to love it when I did that, but all it did was remind me how cold she was, how lifeless she was.

I didn't say anything to her, I didn't whisper in her ear that I loved her or scream at her for leaving. She was dead, she couldn't hear me even if I screamed myself hoarse. Words would mean nothing to Gail anymore.

At the morgue I held it together, I didn't cry when I saw her body and I didn't cry when I walked back through the halls. Ever since they told me there was just a numbness, it was like I was seeing the world through my peripheral vision, like everything was just background noise. It was when I got home that I finally snapped, she'd left a half full cup of juice on the kitchen side and I'd told her just the day before to stop doing that. She'd never leave it there again.

I tore through the house after that, plates, glasses, picture frames all smashed on the floor, the TV pulled off the wall, chairs thrown across the room. Chris and Dov found me curled on the floor, blood dripping from my split knuckles. Someone had called the police department, apparently I was disturbing the peace.

I slept fine those first couple of nights, I woke up, the sheets were cold and I was fine. I thought maybe after my initial outburst I could ride out the storm without drowning. I didn't realise it would end up feeling like I was drowning every night without her.

A part of me hated Gail after she died. How could she drag me into her orbit, make me so dependent on her and then just leave? Just go, just like that, forever. She left me and now everything felt colder.

Everyone was at the funeral, all dressed up in their best, and I hated it. I hated the sympathetic pats on the shoulder, the way they pulled me into hugs and promised everything would get better. I didn't say a word to any of them, because nothing could ever feel better without Gail.

Steve keeps an eye on my a lot these days, at one point he took to sleeping in the spare bedroom. We never spoke about Gail and I'm not sure if that was more for him or more for me. We drank a lot those first couple of months and it was only Traci's interference that stopped us both spiraling into a habit that could have cost us our jobs and our own lives.

"Guys, this is not what Gail would have wanted." I wanted to scream at her when she said that, I wanted to slap her across the face, pin her to the floor and scream at her. This isn't what Gail would have wanted? Gail never wanted to be dead, that's what Gail wanted. But I bit my tongue and poured the last of the alcohol down the sink, because no, this isn't what Gail would have wanted.

When I finally went back to work I asked for a transfer, I couldn't bear to keep seeing all of Gail's friends. The way they would look at me and ask how I was holding up as if they expected me to say everything was fine.

I still see her sometimes, in crowds. There will be a splash of short blonde hair and my heart will feel like it's missing beat after beat, because a part of me still thinks that maybe she isn't dead. Maybe this is a convoluted undercover assignment and any day now she's going to walk through that front door and ask me why I'm not cooking her pancakes. The more logical part of me knows I can't keep living carrying around such a hopeful lie.

I told her once that she was insane and I can't help but wonder if a life without Gail is driving me towards an insanity I won't ever recover from.

My hand rests against her side of the bed again, the sheets are cold and it just about breaks me to know they'll never feel warm again.

* * *

**A/N: ***cough* I'll just go back to writing the next fluffy chapter of You Are (Still) Insane... Should be up during the week.


End file.
